Stephen Paddock was able to assemble a terrifying arsenal in the Las Vegas hotel suite from which he launched his massacre of concert-goers.

He had 23 guns in his lair on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel. When police raided his home they found “in excess” of 19 firearms and explosives.

Investigators are still working to discover out what drove this 64-year-old retired accountant to murder 58 people but the killings are a demonstration of how easily a civilian in the United States can acquire a hoard of lethal weapons.

58 white doves in Las Vegas are released in honor of the shooting victims (Image: Getty Images North America)

Paddock’s home state of Nevada is known for the laxity of its gun laws

You don’t require a permit to buy a gun, nor is there a limit on how many you can purchase. You don’t even need to obtain a licence.

Nevada’s constitution states: “Every citizen has the right to keep and bear arms for security and defence, for lawful hunting and recreational use and for other lawful purposes.”

Paddock would have had no trouble quietly assembling his collection of weapons, which included several semiautomatic rifles.

Stephen Paddock legally bought firearms at this store earlier this year (Image: Getty Images North America)

If he had any doubt about his rights to obtain firearms he could have swung by the website of the mighty National Rifle Association which has a state by state guide to gun laws. In the Nevada section, it states: “It is lawful to possess, purchase or sell a machine gun or silencer that is legally registered and possessed in compliance with all federal laws and regulations.”

American adults' relationship with guns

Pew Research Centre

The contrast with the UK is stark. Here, handguns have been banned since 1997 and buying a rifle requires first satisfying the police you are not a threat to public safety.

Tough laws cannot prevent all gun murders but you are far less likely to be shot dead in Britain than in US. CNN calculated that “Americans are 51 times more likely to be killed by gunfire than people in the United Kingdom.”

Mass shootings make headlines but gun crime is responsible for colossal loss of life across the country.

The marquee at the W Hotel in Las Vegas (Image: AP)

Americans were horrified at the deaths in Las Vegas but 58 people were killed over a 28-day stretch in Chicago and a 68-day period in Baltimore.

Why people say they own guns

Pew Research Centre

The Washington DC-based Gun Violence Archive recorded 15,079 deaths in 2016 (not including suicides) and 30,616 injuries. This is a level of carnage which surpasses the death toll of major wars and terrorist attacks.

According to the US Department of Veterans Affairs there were 4,435 battle deaths during the American Revolution. A total of 4,411 members of the US military died in Operation Iraqi Freedom between 2003 and 2010.

Nearly 3,000 people perished in the September 11 attacks which triggered the so-called War on Terror and the invasion of Afghanistan. But an analysis by Politifact found 1,516,863 people died as a result of firearms between 1968 and 2015.

Where is the political will to tackle this continuing crisis?

This is not just a criminal justice disaster but a public health and safety catastrophe.

Las Vegas Fire & Rescue and Clark County Fire Department personnel hang a large American flag between their ladder trucks (Image: Getty Images North America)

The American Journal of Medicine reported that the total firearm death rate in the United States per 100,000 people was 10.2 (including suicide) in 2010. This compared with 0.2 in the United Kingdom.

Firearm death rates per 100,000 people

The American Journal of Medicine

There will be many social reasons why there are so many killings in the US, but the ease with which people can reach for a gun must be a major contributing factor.

Its 2013 report concluded: “In the United States alone, some 909 mass killings were documented between 1900 and 1999... The fact that an average of 70% of all mass murders in that time period involved firearms points to the accessibility of firearms as being a decisive element in their perpetration.”

This begs the question as to why the US won’t enact laws to radically limit access to guns. Politicians around the world routinely take controversial steps to protect public safety – such as making it compulsory to wear safety belts in cars or restricting where you can smoke tobacco – so why can’t American legislators muster the courage to take action on guns?

Then-US Vice President Dick Cheney inspects a flintlock rifle given to him by the National Rifle Association during the 133rd Annual NRA convention in 2004

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is widely considered one of the most powerful lobby groups in American politics. It claims to have nearly five million members and it argues it has the US Constitution on its side.

The second amendment of this venerated document states that a “well-regulated militia” is “necessary to the security of a free state” and the “right of the people to keep and bear arms” shall “not be infringed”.

Only the most committed pacifists would argue that a country does not need armed security forces. It is quite another thing to claim that the framers of the constitution envisaged a society in which the likes of Stephen Paddock could assemble an arsenal of such destructive force.

However, the NRA has fostered a fear that the right of citizens to bear arms is under attack; it casts itself as “America’s oldest civil rights organisation”.

It proudly states that “when anti-gun lobbyists and politicians began their war on the second amendment four decades ago, the NRA fought back”.

The NRA portrays America’s culture of gun ownership as a national strength. It boasts that it contributed to the defence of the United Kingdom during World War II, describing on its website how its “call to help arm Britain in 1940 resulted in the collection of more than 7,000 firearms for Britain’s defence against potential invasion by Germany (Britain had virtually disarmed itself with a series of gun-control laws enacted between World War I and World War II).”

James Surowiecki of the New Yorker noted in 2015 that between 2000 and 2010 the NRA “spent 15 times as much on campaign contributions as gun-control advocates did” but he added that this was “about a fifteenth of what, say, the National Association of Realtors spends”.

Its biggest asset is not cash, he argued, but “the devotion of its members”.

In a quote that the NRA likes to publicise, George Stephanopoulos, a former senior aide to Bill Clinton, offered a similar analysis, saying: “They’re good citizens. They call their Congressmen.

“They write. They vote.

“They contribute. And they get what they want over time.”

A Las Vegas gun store reported a 25-30% increase in gun sales after the election of Barack Obama (Image: Getty Images North America)

A member of Congress who falls foul of the NRA not only has to worry about direct cash contributions from the organisation drying up. It also grades election candidates according to their stance on gun control; get an “F” and you can expect NRA members to warn their friends and family against voting for you.

Such political pressure means it is almost unthinkable that the constitution could be amended to make it clear that democratically-elected legislators can radically restrict gun ownership. But it is not only money and lobbying that blocks action.

For millions of Americans, guns are icons of freedom.

Guns are a key element of frontier mythology (Image: PA)

Larry Koller wrote in his 1959 work, The Fireside Book of Guns: “For most men a gun is an irresistible object... It must be picked up, hefted, balanced and cocked.

“A rifle must be raised to the shoulder and sighted, a handgun gripped and aimed... The gun is lowered, examined keenly once more, and returned to rest, the gun handler absorbed for the moment in private visions or longings inexpressible...

“This response, it can be said with certainty, is worldwide, although in other countries only a select group, comprising the sporting upper classes and the professional soldier, is likely to have the background to support its enthusiasm. In America it has always been otherwise.”

According to the Pew Research Centre, 42% of US adults live in a household with a gun. More than seven out of 10 (72%) have shot a gun.

Two thirds of gun owners (66%) have more than one. Nearly three-quarters (74%) say gun ownership is “essential to their own sense of freedom”.

Such attitudes are unlikely to change soon. In fact, atrocities may spur families to get a gun of their own.

Gun deaths in an average year

Brady campaign

If you were taught as a child that a gun is a tool with which a responsible citizen can protect his or her family, then news reports about mass shootings and murders may strengthen your conviction you should be armed to keep your loved ones safe.

But a deep understanding of gun deaths may slowly change the way America thinks about these weapons. The hideous truth is that if you own a gun the life you take may be your own.

According to the Brady Centre to Prevent Gun Violence, in an average year in the US 11,564 people are murdered with firearms. But on average 21,037 people use guns to kill themselves, and a further 544 are “killed unintentionally”; white men account for 79% of firearm suicide victims.

The Brady Centre warned: “The connection between guns in the home and suicide fatalities cannot be overstated: while the vast majority of people (90%) who attempt suicide by another method survive, gun suicide attempts are almost always fatal.”

This is the reality of what mass gun ownership means for America. Each year thousands of people take hold of a loaded weapon and turn it on themselves.

The Brady Centre understands that nearly 1.7 million children “live in a home with an unlocked, loaded gun”.

A vigil in Las Vegas after the massacre (Image: Getty Images North America)

It is almost unthinkable that American lawmakers will ever legislate for the confiscation of firearms. Such a move could be a legal impossibility and would set the scene for carnage if thousands of gun owners echoed the words of former NRA president Charlton Heston and told officers the only way they would take hold of their weapons would be from their “cold, dead hands”.

However, millions of Americans have no love of the gun. While 46% of adults in rural areas own a firearm, this is true for only 19% of those in an urban setting.

When families wake up to the fact that having a gun in the house can put their loved ones in danger then there may be a time of great unloading. But until then this continent-spanning country will echo to the sound of gunshots.